Thursday, September 29, 2005

Burning Passion for the Environment

This is what happens when you refuse to allow logging, won`t allow people to pick up deadwood, and insist on maintaining a complete state of nature. When left to themselves, California and the other western states have regular wildfires; this actually REDUCES the amount of forest land.

The wealthy actors and movie producers who live in the high-risk areas are the shrillest voices for environmentalism; perhaps we should have insurance reform and make them eat the costs when their houses burn down. It would be interesting to see how strong their zeal really is.

1 Comments:

Fire is one of the most important “Natural” forces for reshaping our environment on a continuing basis. Our “Native” brethren, you know those displaced northeast Asians that accidentally wandered onto the American continent utilized it frequently when the prairie grass became overgrown and the bison herds moved away to find better forage. They knew that occasionally burning off the detritus of unchecked growth was a necessary evil to renew the grassland and draw the herds back into their proximity. They used it to great effect for millennia and we modern humans have forgotten this lesson.

The left-wing environmentalists would have us worship an unchanging “static” natural world, much like their static economic models and philosophies. In both cases this course of action is both unrealistic and dangerous. The natural world is so incredibly dynamic and humans can do little to influence those changes that take place. Do human activities have an effect on the environment? Absolutely. Is it ever beneficial? Rarely. Leaving every inch of every woodland on the continent untouched by the hand of man would not prevent catastrophic upheavals in the natural world.

I offer for your review the devastating fires that swept through Yellowstone National Park during the “first” Bush administration. It was started by a natural event (a lightening strike) and was allowed to burn virtually unchecked amid howls of dismay by nature lovers across the land. Yellowstone is now recovering spectacularly it is a far more vibrant environment than it was prior to the cleansing effects of the fire. Animals are repopulating areas of the park they had forsaken previously and the forest is now able to renew itself, in ways it had been prevented from doing since the turn of the last century.

Attempting to hold back the forces of nature to fit our notion of the perfect vision is foolish and naïve in the extreme. It is as upsetting to the balance of nature as eliminating the predators that occasionally sampled our flocks and herds. We didn’t see the wide reaching effect of killing off the wolves, bears, and cougars that preyed on a wayward lamb or calf. Just as the environmentalists refuse to see, how leaving forested hills untouched and unmanaged is equally unnatural rather than pristine. “Mother Nature” will find away to change the equation and the arrogance of the environmentalist movement will not even slow her down.

Thanks for pointing out the story Tim, Perhaps this President Bush should apply the Yellowstone model to southern California and “let her burn.”